The Basileus Mansion
by Centralia Currie
Summary: AU. Arthur Kriticos, looking to save some money, moves his family into his Uncle Cyrus' boarding house. The other boarders seem okay, but there's something very sinister about Uncle Cyrus. Why does he keep threatening to banish everyone to the basement? (Warning: slightly OOC.)
1. A New Home

**Disclaimer**: I don't own _Thirteen Ghosts_ or any of these characters.

**Author's Note**: I decided to try something new and different based on this weird dream I had…in this fic, the "ghosts" are regular people who live in modern times. They're obviously not as malicious or vengeful as they are in the movie, because I tried to make them normal. They still live in Cyrus' house, but as paying boarders. The problem arises when Arthur Kriticos needs a new place to live and moves his kids into the boarding house. Is Cyrus a kind-hearted landlord, as he claims? Or is there something more sinister going on?

* * *

Arthur Kriticos didn't have a lot of money, and he was looking to save whenever possible. He had already had to let Maggie go (who was all too happy to leave…the nanny adored Bobby, but looking after him 24/7 was getting a bit tiring.)

But the final straw was when the landlord had raised the Kriticos' rent once again; the widower math teacher and his kids could no longer afford to live in the tiny apartment. Hoping a family member would have pity on him after the fire had claimed his wife's life, Arthur finally tracked down his uncle Cyrus, whom he discovered ran a boarding house. He'd never been close to his uncle, but he was hoping Cyrus Kriticos would be sympathetic about the fire.

"Of course I have room!" Cyrus had written back in an excited e-mail. "No rent payments for you, you're family—as long as you agree to live on my top floor, because it's the only space I have left to rent. It's getting pretty crowded in this house."

Arthur's stomach dropped as he read his uncle's final line: "Altogether, there are eleven of us."

* * *

"Dad, are the people Uncle Cyrus lives with nice?" Bobby asked as he fiddled with his tape recorder in the backseat. Arthur was driving a U-Haul truck with their belongings, and Kathy was following in Arthur's car.

"I'm sure they're all very nice, Bobby."

"Are there any other kids?"

"No, Uncle Cyrus doesn't let kids live in his house. He's made an exception for you because you're his great-nephew. So that means no riding your scooter inside; we don't want Uncle Cyrus mad at us."

"Does Uncle Cyrus have a big driveway?" Bobby had liked riding his scooter in his family's driveway before the fire.

"I don't know, but we'll find out soon!"

Cyrus Kriticos indeed had a very large driveway. Arthur drove the moving van slowly down a dirt road until he saw an elaborate sign that pointed down a long paved road: "BASILEUS MANSION." Underneath, was printed in small letters, "LONG TERM BOARDING RESIDENCE."

"Are we here, Dad?"

"We're here, pal!"

Arthur turned and drove slowly down the driveway in the moving van, constantly looking in the mirror to make sure Kathy was close behind in the car. Up ahead was the house- which Arthur and the kids had seen in pictures sent to them by Cyrus, so it wasn't that big of a surprise—and a massive garage that looked as if it could hold at least six cars; several other vehicles were parked nearby on the grass. A kid who looked about Kathy's age was hitting a baseball against the side of the garage with a wooden bat. The ball would sail right behind him and land in a soccer net, where he would pick it up again and swing it against the garage once more.

"I thought you said there were no kids here, Dad," Bobby told his father, confused, as Arthur stopped the van at the edge of the yard.

"I thought so too, pal," was Arthur's only comment.

The kid, who was wearing a letterman's jacket and jeans, looked over at the moving van and stopped swinging his bat. "PEOPLE ARE HERE!" he announced, yelling in a loud voice so that everyone within a hundred yards could hear him.

Arthur turned around to see a woman in frizzy graying hair and a withered sundress, carrying a pair of gardening shears, heading toward him. "You must be here to see Cyrus," she said matter-of-factly. "You're his nephew?"

"Yeah, I'm Arthur Kriticos, and this is my son Bobby," Arthur said, shaking her hand. "My daughter Kathy is parking the car back there."

"I'm Isabella Smith, and it's so nice to have a family move in." She seemed genuinely happy to meet them. "Most of the time, it's just us single people. Susan might bring a young ruffian home whom she claims to be a date, but these young men have no manners. I haven't met one yet whom I like."

"Are there a lot of young people here?" Arthur asked quietly, gesturing toward the kid, who had resumed his hitting practice.

"Royce over there is the youngest, and I'm the oldest. Everyone else is somewhere in between." She paused. "Royce is in the running for a baseball scholarship, so you'll often find him practicing," Isabella Smith chuckled. "He used to hit against the back wall of the house, which is solid wood, but last week he hit a ball right through one of George's windows, and George was furious. Cyrus says that he has to hit against the garage from now on, or not at all."

Bobby, meanwhile, who wasn't shy at all, had wondered up to this mysterious older kid.

"What's up?" the kid Royce asked. He sounded like he had a bit of an attitude, but was trying his hardest to be polite. "You moving in?"

"Yeah," Bobby said. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen."

"I thought kids weren't allowed here."

"I'm not a kid anymore," the older boy scoffed. "I've been emancipated!"

"What does that mean?"

"That means that a judge has decided that I can be a grownup."

"Cool!" Bobby's eyes were wide. "Can I get emancipated, too?"

"Not until you're older, kid. At least fifteen. Hey, what's your name?"

"Bobby Kriticos."

"Nice to meet you, Bobby. I'm Royce."

* * *

Cyrus Kriticos was in his library, as usual. Cyrus had no occupation to speak of; he simply collected money from his boarders and the other people who rented out buildings he owned, and then spent it as he pleased. He spent most of it on rare finds from around the world.

He blew the rest of it gambling, but nobody else was supposed to know that.

"Arthur!" Cyrus exclaimed, welcoming his nephew with open arms. He was dressed like a magician in a dark suit, and he carried a cane.

"Uncle Cyrus," Arthur greeted his uncle quietly, shaking his hand. Kathy and Bobby were standing behind him, and both thought their uncle looked kind of creepy, but at least he seemed friendly. "Thanks for allowing the kids and I to move in. When they raised the rent on the apartment, we couldn't afford-"

Cyrus waved his hand. "That's no problem, Arthur, my boy. Do need help unloading your truck? I'll get Breaker and George to help carry your things upstairs."

"Who's Breaker?" Bobby whispered to his sister, eyes wide.

"I have no idea," Kathy admitted.

"Now, I only have three rules," Cyrus began, pacing back and forth in his library. "Number one, pay your rent on time—which you don't have to worry about, Arthur, because after all, you _are_ family. Number two, respect people and their belongings. No stealing, harassment, or breaking into people's private bedrooms."

"And no riding the scooter indoors," Arthur reminded his son in a low voice.

"Finally, rule number three. Everyone pulls their own weight around here. If you're assigned chores, you must do them. No exceptions."

"Chores?" Kathy spoke up quietly.

"Oh, just basic things, like washing the dishes and vacuuming. Nothing you probably haven't done before, young lady." He paused, stopped pacing, and suddenly got a bizarre look on his face. His smile suddenly became menacing, and he developed an odd twinkle in his eye. "But if you break the rules," he added through his smile, "I only give you so many warnings. And after you've exhausted your warnings, you have to come live with me. In the basement."

For about a second, Cyrus Kriticos began to laugh. But then the laughing stopped—

- and he faced his family once again with a warm smile.


	2. Moving In

By the time Arthur and the kids made it back outside, two tall men were already starting to unload the moving van. The first looked to be in his late twenties to early thirties, and he stood about six feet tall. The second was somewhere in his thirties or forties, and was at least seven feet tall. Both were Caucasian and wearing work clothes.

"We have to take all of this up to the top floor?" the shorter of the two asked skeptically.

"That's what the plan is," the taller one grumbled under a myriad of heavy boxes.

"Where's George?" Royce had wondered over to the van, still practicing his bat-swinging skills.

"Out back firing up the grill for dinner. We need to eat before six tonight, because Dana has to be at work by seven." The taller man actually had to duck as he made his way out of the van.

"Here, I'll take something," Arthur offered, and the tall man deposited a box into his hands. "Cyrus is in the library, we'll just follow him up to the top floor."

"Gotcha," the shorter man said, emerging from the van carrying a television.

Kathy, Bobby, and Royce began to unload the boxes from the van and place them in the driveway. Arthur followed the two men inside, where Cyrus was ready to lead the way upstairs to the top floor.

First, the four of them climbed the stairs to the second floor, where an attractive cheerleader with curly brown hair was pounding on a door.

"DANA, TIME IS UP!" She was bellowing. "YOU HAVE A THIRTY MINUTE LIMIT IN THE BATHTUB!"

"Temper, Susan," Cyrus chuckled as they passed.

"But Cyrus, I just got home from practice and I need to shower. I've been waiting forever."

Cyrus reached over and knocked on the door. "Let's go, Dana."

"Okay, Cyrus," came a muffled voice from inside.

The walls of the corridors were still made of glass, but nearly all of the bedrooms had bamboo curtains that could be lowered for privacy. Most of the bedrooms on the second floor had curtains lowered, Arthur noticed as they climbed the stairs to the third floor.

The third floor was of the same layout as the second. "Women on the second floor, men on the third," Cyrus was saying as they moved down the hall. "Easy enough to remember, isn't it?"

The fourth floor wasn't as glamorous as the first three. It was just a tiny hallway, three rooms that were slightly larger than closets, and a bathroom. No glass walls and no elaborate décor.

"We still have to share one bathroom?" Kathy complained to her father.

"We have more living space than we did at the apartment," her father reminded her quietly. "Just be thankful."

The two men set the boxes down and went back downstairs for another load.

Bobby took out his tape recorder, which he'd slung over his back. "This just in," he reported into the microphone. "This reporter has been sent to live in a big old house with a bunch of other people." He lowered his voice, looking to add a little drama into his broadcast. "One of them could be a bad guy."

Cyrus Kriticos laughed and slapped his nephew on the back. "Just be downstairs by five-thirty, Arthur. Dinnertime."

* * *

The two men who had been helping Arthur move in were Ryan Kuhn and Horace Mahoney. Mahoney, the taller one, worked at the junkyard and had the nickname "Breaker."

"Do you break a lot of stuff?" Bobby asked him, interested, as Mahoney was hanging up shelves on the wall.

"Sort of," Breaker smiled. "I crush old cars into scrap metal."

"With your _bare hands_?"

Breaker chuckled. "No, with a big machine."

Kuhn was a photographer. He mostly took glamour shots of women looking to become models. "Why do you have long hair?" Bobby asked as Kuhn rummaged through a toolbox looking for a screwdriver to hand to Breaker.

"I don't know, I'm just too lazy to cut it," Kuhn shrugged.

"Well, starting right now, I'm going to be too lazy to cut mine too," Bobby announced.

Kathy, who could hear all of them from the next room, groaned. "Dad _isn't going to like it_!" she shouted over to Bobby's room.

DINGDINGDINGDINGDING!

A high pitched noise that sounded like a doorbell on steroids rang throughout the entire house. Breaker and Ryan Kuhn dropped what they were doing immediately. "Dinnertime," Kuhn announced. "That's the dinner bell."

"Whenever you hear that bell, you have to report to the dining room," Breaker informed Bobby and Kathy as the four of them trudged downstairs. "This time of day, it's usually for dinner, but other times we'll have house meetings, or there's some kind of emergency."

A large African-American man wearing jeans and a t-shirt and a beautiful young woman with dark hair and wearing a white lab coat and name badge were taking their seats at the table when Bobby, Kathy, Breaker, and Ryan filed into the dining room. Like the rest of the first floor, it was walled in with glass and decorated in a subtle yet elegant scheme, with a crystal chandelier and shelves full of relics from Cyrus' trips abroad.

"Is it smart to wear to wear that white coat to dinner?" the man was asking the woman.

"Maybe not, but I don't have time to change later," the woman told him. "I have half an hour to eat, then I have to leave."

Kathy took a seat next to the woman and glanced at her name badge: it read DANA NEWMAN, R.N. "You work at the hospital?" she asked Dana.

"Plastic surgery wing," Dana affirmed. "Mostly second shift, or thereabouts."

"She can't get me a discount on a nose job," the cheerleader, whose name neither of Arthur's kids knew, pouted from across the table.

"You don't need a nose job," Ryan snorted at her.

"I do if I'm going to be Homecoming Queen," she replied pointedly.

"You don't NEED to be Homecoming Queen." Royce sounded completely exasperated; he pounded on the table, and the silverware shook. "Who cares about high school? You're out in eight months, and nobody's going to look back."

"Well, some of us don't have extraordinary sports talents, Royce, so we really could use the scholarship money," the cheerleader responded crudely.

"Susan's parents threw her out two months ago and cut her off," Dana whispered to Kathy. "So whatever you do, don't mention money."

"Easy to remember when I don't have any," Kathy replied despondently.

Bobby was counting the chairs at the dinner table. "There are only twelve chairs," he reported.

"Yeah, that's how many of us are eating," Breaker shrugged, taking a seat next to Ryan.

"But we were told there are ten boarders here plus our Uncle Cyrus," Kathy said quietly, catching on. "That's eleven, and when you add our family, that should be fourteen. Two people are missing."

"Oh!" Dana brightened. "That's because you don't know about the Shelbournes."

"The Shelbournes?

"Yeah, they live at the end of the second floor. Mrs. Shelbourne and her son. They never eat with us. As a matter of fact, they never do anything with us. They're kind of…shy."

"_Really_ shy," Royce added. "But as long as they pay their rent on time, Cyrus doesn't care."

"Dinnertime!" Cyrus Kriticos beamed, arriving through the swinging door from the kitchen. "George, these burgers smell _delicious_!" He set the plate of burgers down on the dining room table. "By the way, nobody go anywhere after dinner unless you're off to work. We need to have a house meeting."

The tenants groaned.


	3. Tenants' Meeting

**Disclaimer**: I STILL don't own these characters.

* * *

If Kathy had to sit through another dinner like the one of her first night, she'd just about kill herself.

The men had very little table manners, and were literally wolfing down food. Susan LeGrow was yelling at them for being raised in a pigsty. Isabella Smith told her that the best way to deal with rude manners was to display fine manners herself instead of yelling.

_Wasn't Isabella complaining not too long ago about Susan's supposed boyfriends?_ Kathy asked herself as she picked at her food. Maybe Susan could stand poor table manners from her own age group, but not from fully-grown adults.

Meanwhile, Royce was giving Bobby some advice about the neighborhood. "Don't play with the Billy kid, he's nuts. He lives about a mile down the road, and all he does is play Cowboys and Indians."

"I don't like Cowboys and Indians," Bobby complained.

"Good. That's exactly what I like to hear," Ryan Kuhn told him, pouring a flood of salt over what seemed like his fourth corn-on-the-cob.

Jimmy Gambino, a businessman in his forties, was yakking on his cell phone while spreading ketchup on his burger. From what Kathy could pick up from the conversation, he was placing bets on some horse races.

"Cyrus, we need to make a rule about cell phones at the table," Dana said out of the corner of her mouth, using a knife to scrape the corn off of the cob.

"Duly noted," Cyrus chuckled, reaching for his glass of water.

"Is it this loud every night?" Kathy asked her great-uncle, wincing.

"If the noise bothers you, Kathy, you're welcome to eat in the kitchen from now on. Having twelve people at the dinner table, I'm afraid, doesn't make for a quiet meal. I'm sure Susan would be glad to join you."

"I'd love to," Susan mumbled, reaching for the grapes.

* * *

According to a chore chart that hung in the kitchen, it was Breaker's turn to do the dishes. As he got busy and Dana left for work, Cyrus herded his boarders into the library.

"We have a house meeting approximately once a week," Cyrus told his nephew, taking a seat in his favorite chair. "Mostly to discuss new rules and open topics. It's always after dinner, and they never last very long." He turned to the cherry wood table beside him and picked up a piece of paper, on which he'd scribbled down a few things. "First of all, people, I _implore_ you to pay stricter attention to your time limits in the bathrooms. There are twelve of you between the second and third floors, and only three bathrooms."

Susan pointed out angrily that Dana needed to be remembered of her thirty-minute restriction in the bathtub. George thought it would be a good idea to remove the bathtubs altogether and just have showers.

Cyrus promised he'd talk to Dana. Then he proceeded to formally introduce Arthur, Kathy, and Bobby to the other boarders, and informed them that they'd be living on the fourth floor. Anyone with new business was asked to speak up: Royce said that the baseball team was having a fundraiser breakfast, and he was trying to sell tickets. Susan said the cheerleading squad was selling candles. Isabella reminded the other boarders not to trample her new flowers. Breaker, who'd just come in from washing the dishes, said that he wanted to adopt one of the stray dogs running around the junkyard.

Cyrus Kriticos said no way.

"Now, listen, folks, before we leave, I just have one more thing to say," Cyrus finished up. "I'd appreciate it if we ate our dinners without talking on the phone."

"I was making a very serious bet," Gambino said defensively.

"Gambino, you're so full of it," Ryan told him, rolling his eyes.

"That's enough, Ryan, but Gambino, I'd start paying more attention to house deadlines than to gambling," Cyrus told him seriously. His voice was set in the gravest of tones. "This is the third time this year you've been late with your rent. Once more, and I'm afraid your time is up. You're moving down to the basement with me." He said this as if this was the worst punishment in the world, nothing short of an execution at San Quentin.

"What's so bad about moving into the basement with Uncle Cyrus?" Kathy asked her father, who was sitting next to her.

Arthur shrugged. "I don't know, honey. You should ask someone."

But Gambino looked positively petrified.

* * *

Kathy asked Susan that night before bed.

"I honestly don't know a whole lot about it," Susan confessed, wiping her makeup off. "But I've been talking to Isabella; she's been living here longer than anyone else. Isabella says that once people move down there, they don't come back."

Kathy just stared. "What do you mean?"

Susan put down her washcloth, crossed over to the bathroom door, and closed the door and lowered her voice. "I mean, _nobody sees them again_. It's like they vanish off the face of the earth. We never see the tenants again. Maybe there's a back door that comes in down there, so they never have to go through the main house again, but I highly doubt it." She picked up her toothbrush. "I don't have any reason to think it's anything horrible, maybe it's just a tiny apartment with no privacy that people who break the rules are restricted to. Then they get fed up and leave. But Gambino's in trouble. He's always gambling and losing money."

"That's why he's having trouble paying rent," Kathy realized aloud.

"Right." Susan shrugged. "I have to admit, I like to gossip, but honestly, I get a funny feeling whenever I think about this. I just want to follow the rules and put it out of my head."

Kathy nodded. At first she thought that Susan was stuck-up, but now the two of them were starting to become friends.


End file.
